A number that irks Bangladesh authorities

SALEEM SAMAD

Bangladesh authorities were pissed off with Odhikar, a human rights organisation, its boss Adilur Rahman Khan and its Director Nasir Uddin Elan for the last several years.

The government was angry because Odhikar was frequently quoted by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union for its authoritative research, monitoring and documentation on extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances of opposition, critics, dissidents, human rights defenders and even journalists were victims.

Some of the victims have returned, but maintained dead silence over their captivity]. A significant number were found dead and the rest have disappeared forever.

Each year, the family members grieve in silence about the disappearances of their loved one, the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances is organised by Mayer Dak on 30 August each year.

Mayer Dak, a network of family members believed to have been forcibly disappeared by state and non-state actors. The Mayer Dak is taken from Argentina’s popular platform Mothers’ Call. Its defiant coordinator Sanjida Islam, is also harassed and intimidated by state security apparatus and law enforcement agencies.

The government officials, the governing Awami League have a scripted message, playing the same record again and again. The content of the message is a mix of denial. A conspiracy theory to overthrow the democratically elected regime of Sheikh Hasina and to undermine the massive development of the country.

The government is too sensitive to the use of “enforced disappearances” and instead likes to say “missing” persons. Then who is responsible for the “missing” persons? In this regard, the government again prefers to remain silent and dumb.

Many top ministers said most of the “missing” persons are due to the inability to repay loans from lenders, family disputes over properties, secret multiple marriages, and migrants missing on dangerous journeys in the sea.

The apologetic officials do not understand that such an explanation is shrugging responsibility for the disappeared persons. The sincerity of the government in international media and rights groups were questioned, as the authorities refused credible probes.

Such attitude of the government has encouraged the police stations to refuse to register cases of disappearances, missing or kidnapped persons by their immediate family members.

This has encouraged criminal gangs to kidnap victims for ransom, as they very well know the police will not accept complaints and will not launch a hunt for the missing persons.

The Centre for Governance Studies (CGS) published a study by Ali Riaz, a distinguished professor at Illinois State University, USA which stated that as many as 86 per cent of the Human Rights Defenders (HRDs) in small towns and grassroots are intermittently faced obstacles in their work from the state and governing party.

The CGS study “Who Defends the Defenders” said the obstacles the HRDs face come from law enforcement agencies, state intelligence agencies, and government officials have been identified by 42.3 per cent of the respondents. While 23.7 per cent of ruling party activists were identified as troublemakers.

Threats, harassment, intimidation or persecution forced 28.6 per cent of respondents to scale down their work and 10.7 per cent have relocated in fear of harassment, said Ali Riaz quoting the findings of the research.

After the publication of the HRD study, CGS is often harassed and intimidated.

The government has been harassing and intimidating the rights organisation Odhikar for the past 12 years. The two rights defenders were under surveillance, their phones were tapped and bank accounts were scrutinised.

The government cancelled Odhikar’s NGO registration and permission to receive foreign funds.

Rights organisations Ain O Shalish Kendra (ASK) and BLAST (Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust) were harassed by the NGO Affairs Bureau (under the Prime Minister’s Office) causing immense delays in approval of their projects and sometimes denied.

The government seems allergic to rights organisations and human rights defenders. What do the authorities want to hide?

In a glaring example of an orchestrated campaign against the HRD, on 14 December 2022, the American Ambassador Peter Haas visited the home of Sanjida Islam, coordinator of Mayer Dak to hear the agony and trauma of the family whose loved ones became victims of enforced disappearances.

Barely 30 minutes of the discussion. Due to security concerns, suddenly the meeting was cut short and security staff hurriedly escorted the ambassador to his vehicle. The crowd of pro-government ‘Mayer Kanna’ (Cry of Mothers) and local Awami League supporters was swelling in front of the residence of Islam making hue and cry.

The crowd mobbed the Ambassador and wanted to hand down a statement, which was declined. His security whisked the envoy safely from the area.

Commenting on the incident a US embassy spokesperson Jeff Ridenour said, “We have raised this matter at the highest levels of the Bangladeshi government, as well as with the Bangladesh embassy in Washington, D.C.”

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr. AK Abdul Momen expressed his annoyance and said that ‘Mayer Kanna’ went against the [diplomatic] norm by trying to submit a memorandum [statement] to the US ambassador. “Our country does not have the culture to stop a foreign ambassador on the road to submit a memorandum,” he remarked.

Despite all odds, Odhikar did not cease monitoring despite the government’s sensitivity to the issue, the extra-judicial deaths and enforced disappearances. The data with sensitive information was uploaded and updated on Odhikar’s website in both English and Bangla, which was also annoying for the regime.

The information was used by major international media, rights groups and human rights annual country documents of American and European governments.

Such sensitive information in the public domain caused outrage among bureaucrats, political leaders, and policymakers, which had dented the government’s international reputation.

Despite the global outcry, the authorities did not bother to investigate the wrongdoings of the state actors and non-state actors.

Instead blamed Odhikar for disseminating disinformation, misinformation, fake news, hoax news, mal-information, and rumour and of course fake news.

Coming to the issue of numbers, Odhikar has been banned and two leaders of the organisation were sentenced to two years in prison in September.

The crime of Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasir Uddin Elan was that ten years ago Odhikar published a number of people killed on 5 and 6 May 2013. The midnight police crackdown brutally suppressed the Islamist protest.

Thousands of members of a hardline Sunni Muslim organisation, Hefazat-e-Islam (Defender of Islam) occupied downtown Motijheel Commercial Area unless the government accepted their demands to declare Bangladesh an Islamic Republic, scrap the secular constitution, and change the national flag and the national anthem. Also implement Shariah laws and a host of other Islamic dogma, which incidentally match with the Wahabi creeds advocated by the Taliban and Islamic State (ISIS).

The Human Rights Watch said at least 58 people were killed in police action. Amnesty International put the figure at 44. It said 3 members of law enforcement and 41 civilians were killed in the violence on May police mayhem.

Well, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) and Home Affairs Ministry contradicted each other. Police said the figure was only 11, while the Home Ministry said 28 dead. Both DMP and the ministry never published the names of the dead people.

Odhikar, several times changed the figure and finally concluded that the death stood at 61. The organisation never published the names of the victims and their addresses.

Khan defending himself in the court said it’s a moral obligation that the privacy of the immediate family members be protected from the wrath of law enforcement agencies.

He said that Odhikar did not publish the names and addresses for fear of being harassed and intimidated by law enforcement agencies in forcing the victim’s families to sign a paper stating that the person is living in the Gulf countries or another story.

In a ‘white paper’ published by the “People’s Commission” formed by Ekattorer Ghatok Dalal Nirmul Committee (committee against the collaborators of 1971) challenged the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and Hefazat-e-Islam’s claim that thousands of people have been killed, which were exaggerated and incomplete.

The “People’s Commission” got a list of 79 names from Hefazat-e-Islam.

“Awami League leadership and Bangladesh authorities mock victims and routinely obstruct investigations, making clear that the government has no intention of meaningfully addressing enforced disappearances by its security forces,” said Brad Adams, Asia Director, Human Rights Watch.

Bangladesh has not ratified the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.

The curious question arises, why did the government target Odhikar? Why did authorities not list Hefazat-e-Islam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International for disseminating misinformation or disinformation? The question is left to the readers to respond.

First published in the Northeast News, 2 October 2023

Saleem Samad is an award-winning independent journalist and media rights defender based in Bangladesh. A recipient of the prestigious Ashoka Fellowship and Hellman-Hammett Award. He could be reached at <saleemsamad@hotmail.com>; Twitter @saleemsamad

Militants in Myanmar: Endangered Lives Of Ordinary Rohingyas

SALEEM SAMAD

Two years ago on August 24, Reuters news agency reported that Muslim militants in Myanmar staged a coordinated attack on 30 police posts and an army base in Rakhine State, and at least 59 of the insurgents and 12 members of the security forces were killed.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a group previously known as Harakah al-Yaqin, which instigated the October attacks, claimed responsibility for the early morning offensive and warned of more.

Nonetheless, the attack caught the Myanmar government by surprise. Its military, known as the Tatmadaw, responded with full-blown pogroms, including attacks on Rohingya villages and acts of arson.

State violence conducted in Rakhine State, what the United Nations has described as "a textbook case of ethnic cleansing" against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar's Rakhine State.

The atrocities ignited fresh exodus of another 700,000 Rohingya civilians to flee to Bangladesh since August 25, killing an estimated 3,000 people and burning 288 Rohingya villages, according to rights groups and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Human Rights Watch.

However, Myanmar does not hesitate to argue that its actions were counter-terrorism operations, but its response to the threat posed by Rohingya militants is disproportionate and is likely to fuel militancy for years to come, predicts writes Prof Zachary Abuza at the National War College where he focuses on Southeast Asian security issues.

The Rohingya Solidarity Organization (RSO) was active in the mid-1980s to 1990s. The RSO achieves very little militarily, but its ties to the Jamaat-e-Islami and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami (HuJI) in Bangladesh and Pakistan caused concern to regional security. By the mid-2000s, the RSO was defunct.

The Rohingyas literally hoped that the country's democratic transition would address their legal rights. While democratic freedoms also unleashed extreme Buddhist nationalism.

In 2015, Attullah Abu Amar Jununi, also known as Hafiz Tohar, founded Harakah al-Yaqin, the Faith Movement, to "defend, save, and protect [the] Rohingya community … in line with the principles of self-defense".

Attullah was born in Karachi, Pakistan to Rohingya parents, and raised in Saudi Arabia, where he was a cleric in a mosque. He moved to Bangladesh, crossing into Rakhine State in late 2015 or early 2016 via Pakistan.

Attullah led Harakah al-Yaqin was an offshoot of Aqa Mul Mujahideen (Faith Movement of Arakan), which itself emerged from another organization, Harakat ul-Jihad Islami-Arakan, headed by Abdus Qadoos Burmi, a Rohingya from Pakistan.

Disgruntled members of RSO, defected to Harakah al-Yaqin. By 2015, Attullah's group was actively recruiting youths from the refugee camps.

In early 2017 Harakah al-Yaqin rebranded to ARSA and was initially engaged in hit-and-run tactics in a bid to stockpile armory from Myanmar security forces.

The rebranding as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army was apparently to soundless Islamist and more as a legitimate ethno-nationalist group fighting in self-defense.

But ARSA continued to recruit through its network of clerics and mosques, and there is a far more religious basis to the movement than they publicly admit.

On August 18, 2017, Attullah released a video statement justifying ARSA's actions, stating that his group was established only in response to government and paramilitary abuses against the Rohingya community. "Our primary objective under ARSA is to liberate our people from dehumanized oppression perpetrated by all successive Burmese regimes," he said.

Possibly ARSA leaders hastily decided the attacks on border police check posts only two days after UN Special Representative Kofi Annan submitted his report stating several pragmatic recommendations, and Myanmar tacitly agreed on some issues towards a conflict resolution but disputed with most recommendations on the status of Rohingya Muslims citizenship.

ARSA knew very well that the Myanmar military's response would be heavy-handed. Despite understanding their limitation, the ragtag foot soldiers are poorly funded and possess only limited light weapons and dare not confront the Myanmar military, currently the 11th largest in the world, with its long track record of repression against ethnic minorities.

The duffers in ARSA leadership had no understanding of the consequences of hit-and-run tactics that will endanger the lives of more than a million Rohingyas in Rakhine State.

The two-month long campaign of ethnic cleansing, with even senior officials in the government of de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi justifying the military's attacks on civilians, seems to have caught ARSA off guard, writes Prof Zachary Abuza at the National War College.

Possibly the ARSA did not benefit from Rohingyas languishing in sprawling refugee camps - as UNHCR claimed to the largest refugee camps in the world.

First published The New Nation, 1 October 2019

Saleem Samad is an independent journalist, media rights defender, recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @ saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad @ hotmail.com

Islamist threat challenges LGBT, Gay and Lesbian in Bangladesh

Saleem Samad

Tourist’s most popular guidebook Lonely Planet, advises gay travellers to be discreet in Bangladesh, and warns that homosexuality is illegal in Bangladesh, and homosexual acts are punishable under Bangladesh law with deportation, fines and/or prison.

In December 2008, Bangladesh was one of 59 countries that signed a statement opposing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights at the United Nations General Assembly.

Unfortunately, Bangladesh is one of 75 countries that currently have laws criminalizing homosexuality and the highest punishment for “unnatural intercourses” is life imprisonment, but lesser jail terms of up to 10 years in prison and fines might also be handed out under the existing law, writes Dhaka Tribune.

Primarily the country is a Sunni Muslim majoritarian nation, a major challenge for the LGBT, gay and lesbian communities facing in Bangladesh.

Despite Bangladesh being a conservative country, the government in July 2016 has recognized the ‘trans-gender’ community as ‘third gender’ with a single-sentence: “The Government of Bangladesh has recognized the Hijra community of Bangladesh as a Hijra sex.”

This circular represented a significant step toward securing a range of rights for Bangladesh’s ‘hijras’ — people who, assigned “male” at birth, identify as feminine later in life and prefer to be recognized as ‘hijra’ or a third gender.

According to Section 377, the country’s British colonial-era penal code, voluntary carnal intercourse against “the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” is punishable with imprisonment for life or with imprisonment which may extend to ten years and fines.

The Dhaka Tribune in an editorial writes against section 377 of the criminal code stating their belief that while most people in Bangladesh were against homosexuality, they did not want to see people put in jail for it or for the government to waste resources treating it as a crime.

Same-sex romantics or sexual activities are not accepted in society, with LGBT people facing discrimination, verbal and physical abuse, and unique legal and social challenges. Same-sex sexual activity, whether in public or private, is illegal and punishable with fines and up to life imprisonment, though this law is rarely enforced. However Bangladeshi societies view it as a negative activity. Consequently, Bangladesh does not recognise the relationship between same gender.

The New York based rights defender, Human Rights Watch (HRW) states that “Discrimination against LGBT people is pervasive in Bangladesh”.

Homosexual relations are criminalized in Bangladesh and many LGBT activists have been forced into exile.

According to NBC, those who have fled the country are slowly reconnecting and trying to organize a meeting to assess the situation. The attacks have driven local LGBT activists underground, French news agency AFP reported.

On March 30, Labannya Hijra, a third gender activist became a Bangladeshi hero. Witnessing the murder by Islamist militants of the secular blogger Washiqur Rahman Babuon a street in capital Dhaka, she grabbed the fleeing assailants. Her courageous intervention led to the arrest of two men, who later confessed to the killing.

Days after Xulhaz Mannan and Tonoy Mahbub hacked to death in a Dhaka apartment on the evening of April 25, 2016, HRW urged the Bangladesh authority to immediately probe the killings of two LGBT human rights activists.

Ansar-al Islam, the Bangladeshi branch of dreaded Al Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The groups said “the two were killed because they were ‘pioneers of practicing and promoting homosexuality in Bangladesh’ and were ‘working day and night to promote homosexuality … with the help of their masters, the U.S. crusaders and its Indian allies,’” CTV reported.

Mannan was an editor of Roopban, Bangladesh’s first LGBT specialised magazine, which began publishing in 2014. He was a visible and openly gay human rights activist who supported and protected LGBT people even in the face of threats against the community.

The assassination of two LGBT rights activists follow a spate of 30 killings since early 2015, targeted attacks on writers, educators, bloggers, and editors who advocated liberal and secular democracy, that radical groups believe are against Islamic ideology.

In the face of police and civil authorities’ reluctance to provide security to those who sought help in the wake of death threats by the Muslim bigots has caused shiver and fear among them.

“This one incident broke the sense of security. More than 15 people left the country. More than 10 want to leave. People in Bangladesh don’t want to talk to us. The whole community is so scattered and scared,” an activist told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of an international LGBT conference in Bangkok, Thailand in end of 2016.

In 2013, the country’s National Human Rights Commission called on the government to protect sexual and gender minorities from discrimination.

To add fuel into fire, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina advised bloggers and social media activists to use restraint in their exercise of free speech or leave the country for their safety.

In recent years, LGBT people in Bangladesh have also been targeted with extremist rhetoric. For example, in November 2015, when activists began publishing a cartoon series featuring a lesbian character, religious groups issued hateful anti-LGBT statements, calling on the government to prosecute LGBT people under section 377 and Sharia (Islamic Law).

Even though a small number of gay rights organisations and activists in Bangladesh were raising their voice to establish rights for the LGBT community, none of them has so far engaged in a legal fight to recognise the status of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the country, said Supreme Court lawyer Jyotirmoy Barua.

First published in Shuddhashar online magazine, October 2019

Saleem Samad, is an Ashoka Fellow (USA), recipient of Hellman-Hammett Award and also Bangladesh correspondent of Paris based international media rights organization, Reporters Without Borders (RSF). Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com; Twitter @saleemsamad

Victims of abduction in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Nepal & Ugyhur

Women shout slogans during a protest following restrictions after the government scrapped the special constitutional status for Kashmir, in Srinagar August 14, 2019. Photo: REUTERS

SALEEM SAMAD

As the world observes the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on Aug 30, another hundred or more people will be abducted silently by state security agencies globally.

Their relatives will hold portraits of disappeared family members and call upon governments to stop such abductions, and seek accountability for the enforced disappearances, killings, and abductions, in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Palestine and elsewhere.

Families cry for answers on International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances on August 30, a day declared by the United Nations.

Since its inception in 1980, the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has registered 56,363 cases across 112 countries — but thousands of other cases were simply not reported!

Unfortunately, governments are often reluctant to respond. Besides, security agencies engaged in enforced disappearances, while non-state actors also settle their scores in muddy waters. They enjoy their impunity as they rub shoulders with the mighty in the corridors of power.

The impunity is extended to these forces, often because their crimes against humanity may have had government sanction.

The legal explanation does not, however, convey the horror families endure as they try and grapple with the enforced disappearance of a loved one.

Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director of Human Rights Watch says, under international human rights law, an enforced disappearance occurs when a person is taken into custody by government officials or their agents and the state refuses to acknowledge the person’s fate or whereabouts, placing the victim outside the protection of the law.

In South Asia, the recent history of violent conflicts ------ whether the war in Afghanistan; insurgencies in Balochistan, Pakistan or Kashmir, India; the civil war in Sri Lanka and Nepal; or political violence in Bangladesh and the Maldives------ has witnessed serious human rights violations including secret detentions and enforced disappearance, states the New York-based Human Rights Watch.

Bangladesh authorities have traditionally trashed allegations of the disappearances even after the security forces have taken someone away in front of witnesses. Instead, the agencies claim that the ‘disappeared’ are hiding to evade banks loans or are felons dodging arrest.

In Indian administered Kashmir, they use the shocking word ‘half widow,’ for women whose husbands are missing.

In Kashmir, hundreds of unidentified foreign jihadists are buried in unmarked graves, but the government is yet to order forensic tests to determine whether the remains of "disappeared" Kashmiris also lie buried in those graveyards.

In Sri Lanka, families of the tens of thousands of people who disappeared during the three-decade-long bitter ethnic civil war are camped in street corner protests. The war ended in 2009, and these families are still hoping that their loved ones will be found.

In Nepal, a Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons received nearly 3,100 complaints but failed to explain the causes and origin of the scary social phenomenon experienced so widely during the country’s ten-year civil war.

The victims experience egregious form of human rights violation, removed from legal protections, remaining at the mercy of their captors, at severe risk of torture or inhumane treatment, and of extrajudicial killings, says Meenakshi Ganguly.

"The families of missing ones spend the rest of their lives waiting for their loved ones to return home, or at least be told where they are buried. This is a severe form of psychological torture," said Leonce Byimana, a psychologist and Executive Director of TASSC, a US-based Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition.

On this International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, human rights leaders will be speaking on behalf of missing loved ones---- for the Sindhis in Pakistan, the Kurds in the Middle East, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and Uyghur Muslims in China at the National Press Club in Washington DC.

Sufi Laghari, Executive Director of the Washington DC-based Sindhi Foundation also coordinating the Washington Press Club event, said: "We want people to understand how governments carry out enforced disappearances to silence their dissidents."

Until their whereabouts are determined, families of the disappeared should have access to effective remedies and reparations, including regular updates on the status of the investigations. This cruelty needs to stop.

First published in the Bangla Tribune, 30 August 2019

Saleem Samad, is a journalist, media rights defender, also recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Why Rohingyas decline to return to Myanmar?

Rohingya refugees, who crossed the border from Myanmar two days before, walk after they received permission from the Bangladeshi army to continue on to the refugee camps, in Palang Khali, near Cox`s Bazar, Bangladesh Oct 19, 2017. REUTERS

SALEEM SAMAD

The first step was to develop confidence-building measures among the refugees. The Myanmar government should have invited a delegation of refugee leaders along with Bangladesh officials to visit the strife-torn Rakhine State.

As feared, the Rohingya refugees refused to return to Myanmar, despite all arrangements made for them to go back, as finalized by two neighbouring countries.

The second attempt in ten months to repatriate the Muslim refugees living in Bangladesh to Myanmar has fallen flat. It is understood that they would not return unless their demands were met by the Myanmar government.

Nearly two years after thousands of Rohingyas were forced to flee from Rakhine State, Myanmar enlisted 3,450 as genuine refugees for repatriation on August 22. But Most feared reprisals and refused to return. A similarly botched effort last November to ensure their return sowed confusion in the refugee camps and sparked protests.

On August 25, 2017,  Myanmar security forces began an ethnic cleansing that drove an estimated one million Rohingya to neighbouring Bangladesh.

The refugees have information that an estimated 500,000 Rohingyas who remained in Rakhine State are living in appalling conditions and Myanmar security forces have confined them to camps and villages, severely restricting their freedom of movement.

For those Rohingyas confined in several hamlets, the authorities have denied freedom of movement, deprived their access to sustainable livelihoods and basic humanitarian services including adequate food, medical care, and education. These facts have raised alarm among the refugees here.

Moments after the botched attempt, Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr AK Momen explained that the refugees eligible for repatriation declined to return to Rakhine State as they did not feel secure and safe.

Bangladesh, aspiring to attain the middle-income threshold by 2021, had been generous with a million Rohingyas –  authorities felt the refugee should not be compelled to return to their villages that were not safe.

He lamented that the Myanmar government had the larger responsibility to be proactive in their political commitment to ensure voluntary, safe, and dignified repatriation of Rohingyas languishing in the world's largest refugee camps in Cox's Bazar.

The senior-most Bangladesh official in charge of foreign affairs spelled out two pressing issues, which needed immediate administrative attention.

Second, Bangladesh was planning to set up an International Commission on Rohingya Refugees with members drawn from different countries, maybe also from international organizations.

However, Dr Momen was hopeful in that Myanmar had twice implemented the provisions of the memoranda of understanding (MoU) to repatriate Rohingya refugees in 1993 and 1988.

Accordingly, on 19 December 1993, an Operational Plan for mass repatriation was presented by the UNHCR, facilitating the voluntary repatriation of approximately 190,000 refugees.

From the second refugee influx, in December 1998, over 229,000 refugees had officially returned. But the story of Rohingyas was not over; the cycle of the exodus had not ended.

Aljazeera TV alleged that international media, rights groups, and United Nations were not allowed to visit Rakhine State, especially to the villages from where the Rohingyas were forced to flee in the wake of genocide.

New York-based Human Rights Watch argues that their repatriation carries possible risks exposing refugees to ethnic violence.

A United Nations-backed Fact-Finding Mission found sufficient negative information to warrant the investigation and prosecution of senior military officials for grave crimes, including genocide, in Rakhine State.

The international rights group claimed that the Myanmar regime had not made any effort to probe widespread crime against humanity against the Rohingyas.

The regime also obstructed international efforts to investigate the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims to protect their basic rights, facilitate international justice for victims, and ensure that any returns of Rohingya refugees were voluntary, safe, and dignified.

Meantime, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the crisis as yet.

First published in the Bangla Tribune, 24 August 2019

Saleem Samad is a journalist, a media rights defender and recipient of Ashoka Fellow (USA) and Hellman-Hammett Award. Twitter @saleemsamad; Email: saleemsamad@hotmail.com

Seeking war crimes justice, Bangladesh protesters fight 'anti-Islam' label

ELIZABETH YUAN, CNN

"For the government to ban Jamaat would mean pushing them against the wall"- Romen Bose, Exclusive Analysis

Since early February tens of thousands of people have occupied an intersection of Bangladesh's capital every day, but unlike Tahrir Square and Occupy Wall Street, they're not calling for the overthrow of the government or greater economic equality.

The rallies, fueled by social media, are demanding capital punishment for people convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the war of independence from Pakistan more than four decades ago.

Of the 10 indicted by the International Crimes Tribunal, a domestic court, in Bangladesh last year, seven are top leaders of Bangladesh's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, including former MP Delwar Hossain Sayedee who faces judgment on Thursday.

A tenth person -- Abul Kalam Azad, an expelled Jamaat member who is at large -- was convicted and sentenced in absentia to death by hanging in the tribunal's first verdict in January. The cleric is believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

Jamaat acknowledges having supported a united Pakistan, but the party has been accused of helping Pakistani forces commit atrocities during the nine-month-long 1971 war, in which as many as three million people were killed and hundreds of thousands of women were raped.

The rallies at the Shahbag intersection in Dhaka were sparked on February 5 after Jamaat's assistant secretary general, Abdul Kader Mollah, was sentenced to life in jail for genocide and other atrocities -- a sentence protesters considered too mild for a convicted war criminal.

Jamaat has decried what it calls a smear campaign and questioned why the Awami League had not pressed forward on war crimes trials while in power during the 1970s and 1990s.

As with Cambodia, it has taken some four decades for Bangladesh to address its genocide, and the war crimes process has not been without criticism.

The ruling Awami League, which made the prosecution of war crimes perpetrators a central election plank in 2008, has been criticized by Human Rights Watch for proposing amendments that would enable a court to overturn a life sentence in favor of a death penalty.

"A government supposedly guided by the rule of law cannot simply pass retroactive laws to overrule court decisions when it doesn't like them," said Brad Adams, HRW's Asia director in a statement this month. The proposed amendments "make a mockery of the trial process," he added.

Significance of protests

The weeks-long Shahbag protests were initiated by bloggers to protest Mollah's sentence and grew to include university students and youth, celebrities like the Bangladesh national cricket team, and a large contingent of women, cutting across economic, religious and ethnic divides, according to six observers. The intersection has since been renamed "Projonmo Chottor" (New Generation Roundabout), with poetry read, music played, and candles burned.

In a piece published on The Asia Foundation's website, Awrup Sanyal, a Dhaka-based writer, wrote that the Shahbag movement has "opened up space for discussions on subjects that until now were considered taboo or avoided altogether." Such subjects include, according to Sanyal, fundamentalism in politics; secularism; unaccountability; inclusiveness irrespective of religion and ethnicity; contradictory historical narratives; boycotting of businesses; and the spirit of the 1971 independence movement.

"For four decades, we have remained quiet with the hope that one day these war criminals will be sentenced to death," said Shoaib, a student of Dhaka University, in a CNN iReport by Aminul Islam Sahib. "We cannot accept their lifetime imprisonment."

The protests have also included a call for the ban of religious-based political parties and Jamaat in particular, an opinion that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League have endorsed.

But such a scenario "would raise stability risks in Bangladesh," says Romen Bose, deputy head of Asia forecasting at Exclusive Analysis, recently acquired by the political risk consulting firm IHS. "For the government to ban Jamaat would mean pushing them against the wall," with the potential for a guerilla-style insurgency if the party is locked out of politics, he added.

Meanwhile Jamaat's tactic has been to turn criticism of it into criticism of Islam, Bose said.

Jamaat has called the Shahbag participants "anti-Islamic atheists" protected by the government who are deserving of arrests and death sentences for defaming the religion. The party also accuses the protesters of seeking to overturn an independent judiciary.

On February 15 a blogger and one of the Shahbag organizers, Ahmed Rajib Haider, was hacked to death hours after he called for a boycott of Jamaat-affiliated institutions and businesses. An atheist, he is alleged to have been behind anti-Islamic posts, which protesters contend are part of a cyber war to malign the movement.

The youth-led non-violent rallies have occurred amid countrywide strikes and counter protests backed by Jamaat and Islamist parties to protest the government's support of "atheists."

As yet, there have been no direct confrontations between Shahbag protesters and Jamaat, Bose said, a scenario he says would be "disastrous."

On Tuesday, Shahbag activists marched to the home ministry with a memorandum demanding the arrest of the editor of the newspaper Amar Desh for instigating violence with reports that their movement was anti-Islam.

The editor, Mahmudur Rahman, who is being sued for such charges, has been defended in the past by the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, citing "ongoing judicial harassment." Amar Desh, according to the group, reports on corruption cases in Bangladesh.

More recently, the group expressed concerns about a restricting environment for human rights activities ahead of elections in the coming year.

Meanwhile, the International Press Institute has condemned attacks on at least 18 journalists by Jamaat supporters across the country after last Friday's Juma prayers.

Bose, of Exclusive Analysis, pointed out that some of those journalists may be bloggers, who have been among the organizers of the Shahbag protests.

Photographer and CNN iReporter Shah Sazzad Hossein has gone to Shahbag about a dozen times to get a sense of who the demonstrators are and what keeps bringing them back.

He says he sees no signs of the rallies abating, with people wanting nothing less than the death penalty for war criminals.

And yet he cannot shake a feeling of foreboding.

"I think there will be violence in the coming months," he said. "I'm not afraid."

First appeared in CNN online, February 28, 2013

Burma: Government Forces Targeting Rohingya Muslims

Photo: Bangladesh border officials denying boatloads of Rohingya refugees from Burma entry at the port town of Shah Porir Dweep, Bangladesh, on June 18, 2012

© 2012 Richard Pearshouse/Human Rights Watch

Abuses Follow Horrific June Violence Between Arakan Buddhists and Rohingya

Burmese security forces committed killings, rape, and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims after failing to protect both them and Arakan Buddhists during deadly sectarian violence in western Burma in June 2012, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released today. Government restrictions on humanitarian access to the Rohingya community have left many of the over 100,000 people displaced and in dire need of food, shelter, and medical care.

The 56-page report, “‘The Government Could Have Stopped This’: Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State,” describes how the Burmese authorities failed to take adequate measures to stem rising tensions and the outbreak of sectarian violence in Arakan State. Though the army eventually contained the mob violence in the state capital, Sittwe, both Arakan and Rohingya witnesses told Human Rights Watch that government forces stood by while members from each community attacked the other, razing villages and committing an unknown number of killings.

“Burmese security forces failed to protect the Arakan and Rohingya from each other and then unleashed a campaign of violence and mass roundups against the Rohingya,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government claims it is committed to ending ethnic strife and abuse, but recent events in Arakan State demonstrate that state-sponsored persecution and discrimination persist.”

The Burmese government should take urgent measures to end abuses by their forces, ensure humanitarian access, and permit independent international monitors to visit affected areas and investigate abuses, Human Rights Watch said.

The “Government Could Have Stopped This,” is based on 57 interviews conducted in June and July with affected Arakan, Rohingya, and others in Burma and in Bangladesh, where Rohingya have sought refuge from the violence and abuses.

The violence erupted in early June after reports circulated that on May 28 an Arakan Buddhist woman was raped and killed in the town of Ramri by three Muslim men. Details of the crime were circulated locally in an incendiary pamphlet, and on June 3 a large group of Arakan villagers in Toungop stopped a bus and brutally killed 10 Muslims on board. Human Rights Watch confirmed that nearby local police and army stood by and watched but did not intervene. In retaliation, on June 8 thousands of Rohingya rioted in Maungdaw town after Friday prayers, killed an unknown number of Arakan, and destroyed considerable Arakan property. Violence between Rohingya and Arakan then swept through Sittwe and surrounding areas.

Marauding mobs from both Arakan and Rohingya communities stormed unsuspecting villages and neighborhoods, brutally killed residents, and destroyed and burned homes, shops, and houses of worship. With little to no government security present to stop the violence, people armed themselves with swords, spears, sticks, iron rods, knives, and other basic weaponry. Inflammatory anti-Muslim media accounts and local propaganda fanned the violence. Numerous Arakan and Rohingya who spoke to Human Rights Watch reached the conclusion that the authorities could have prevented the violence and the ensuing abuses could have been avoided.

A 29-year-old Arakan man and an older Rohingya man each told Human Rights Watch, separately but in the same words, “The government could have stopped this.”

The Burmese army’s presence in Sittwe eventually stemmed the violence. However, on June 12, Arakan mobs burned down the homes of up to 10,000 Rohingya and non-Rohingya Muslims in the city’s largest Muslim neighborhood while the police and paramilitary Lon Thein forces opened fire on Rohingya with live ammunition.

A Rohingya man in Sittwe, 36, told Human Rights Watch that an Arakan mob “started torching the houses. When the people tried to put out the fires, the paramilitary shot at us. And the group beat people with big sticks.” Another Rohingya man from the same neighborhood said, “I was just a few feet away. I was on the road. I saw them shoot at least six people – one woman, two children, and three men. The police took their bodies away.”

In Sittwe, where the population was about half Arakan and half Muslim, most Muslims have fled the city or were forcibly relocated, raising questions about whether the government will respect their right to return home. Human Rights Watch found the center of the once diverse capital now largely segregated and devoid of Muslims.

In northern Arakan State, the army, police, Nasaka border guard forces, and Lon Thein paramilitaries have committed killings, mass arrests, and other abuses against Rohingya. They have operated in concert with local Arakan residents to loot food stocks and valuables from Rohingya homes. Nasaka and soldiers have fired upon crowds of Rohingya villagers as they attempted to escape the violence, leaving many dead and wounded.

“If the atrocities in Arakan had happened before the government’s reform process started, the international reaction would have been swift and strong,” said Adams. “But the international community appears to be blinded by a romantic narrative of sweeping change in Burma, signing new trade deals and lifting sanctions even while the abuses continue.”

Since June, the government has detained hundreds of Rohingya men and boys, who remain incommunicado. The authorities in northern Arakan State have a long history of torture and mistreatment of Rohingya detainees, Human Rights Watch said. In the southern coastal town of Moulmein, 82 fleeing Rohingya were reportedly arrested in late June and sentenced to one year in prison for violating immigration laws.

“The Burmese authorities should immediately release details of detained Rohingya, allow access to family members and humanitarian agencies, and release anyone not charged with a crime recognized under international law in which there is credible evidence,” Adams said. “This is a test case of the government’s stated commitment to reform and protecting basic rights.”

Burma’s 1982 Citizenship Law effectively denies Burmese citizenship to the Rohingya population, estimated at 800,000 to 1 million people. On July 12, Burmese President Thein Sein said the “only solution” to the sectarian strife was to expel the Rohingya to other countries or to camps overseen by the United Nations refugee agency.

“We will send them away if any third country would accept them,” he said.

Burmese law and policy discriminate against Rohingya, infringing on their rights to freedom of movement, education, and employment. Burmese government officials typically refer to the Rohingya as “Bengali,” “so-called Rohingya,” or the pejorative “Kalar,” and Rohingya face considerable prejudice from Burmese society generally, including from longtime democracy advocates and ethnic minorities who themselves have long faced oppression from the Burmese state.

Burma’s new human rights commission – led by chairman Win Mra, an ethnic Arakan –

has not played an effective role in monitoring abuses in Arakan State, Human Rights Watch said. In a July 11 assessment of the sectarian violence, the commission reported on no government abuses, claimed all humanitarian needs were being met, and failed to address Rohingya citizenship and persecution.

“The Burmese government needs to urgently amend its citizenship law to end official discrimination against the Rohingya,” Adams said. “President Thein Sein cannot credibly claim to be promoting human rights while calling for the expulsion of people because of their ethnicity and religion.”

The sectarian violence has created urgent humanitarian needs for both Arakan and Rohingya communities, Human Rights Watch said. Local Arakan organizations, largely supported by domestic contributions, have provided food, clothing, medicine, and shelter to displaced Arakan. By contrast, the Rohingya population’s access to markets, food, and work remains dangerous or blocked, and many have been in hiding for weeks.

The government has restricted access to affected areas, particularly Rohingya areas, crippling the humanitarian response. United Nations and humanitarian aid workers have faced arrest as well as threats and intimidation from the local Arakan population, which perceives the aid agencies as biased toward the Rohingya. Government restrictions have made some areas, such as villages south of Maungdaw, inaccessible to humanitarian agencies.

“The authorities should immediately grant unfettered humanitarian access to all affected populations and begin work to prevent future violence between the communities,” Adams said. “The government should assist both communities with property restitution and ensure all of the displaced can return home and live in safety.”

Since the June violence, thousands of Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh where they have faced pushbacks from the Bangladeshi government in violation of international law. Human Rights Watch witnessed Rohingya men, women, and children who arrived onshore and pleaded for mercy from Bangladesh authorities, only to be pushed back to sea in barely seaworthy wooden boats during rough monsoon rains, putting them at grave risk of drowning or starvation at sea or persecution in Burma. It is unknown how many died in these pushbacks. Those who were able to make it into Bangladesh live in hiding, with no access to food, shelter, or protection.

Bangladesh is obligated to open its borders and provide the Rohingya at least temporary refuge until it is safe for them to return, in accordance with international human rights norms. Human Rights Watch called on concerned governments to assist Bangladesh in doing so and press both Burma and Bangladesh to end abuses and ensure the safety of Rohingyas.

“Bangladesh is violating its international legal obligations by callously pushing asylum seekers in rickety boats back into the open sea,” Adams said.

The Government Could Have Stopped This: Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State is available at:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2012/08/01/government-could-have-stopped-0

Bangladesh keeps door firmly shut on Rohingya

SHAIKH AZIZUR RAHMAN

Refugee rights activists say Bangladesh is acting against international humanitarian law in turning back Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. However, Dhaka says it is doing nothing wrong and must put its own people first.

Ignoring appeals from international community, Bangladesh is sticking to its stand not to allow any Rohingya refugee inside its territory as every week boatloads of Rohingyas are seeking to flee Myanmar.

The ethnic violence that broke out in Arakan state in Myanmar last month is continuing. Earlier this month, US-based Human Rights Watch reported that Myanmar's security forces were indulging in mass arrest and the use of unlawful force against the Rohingyas.

In the past six weeks more than 1,300 Rohingya men, women and children sought to cross over to Bangladesh.

Little more than a hundred of the Rohingyas managed to sneak into Bangladesh in the first couple days after violence broke out in Myanmar. But, despite their fervent appeals seeking refuge in Bangladesh, the remaining Rohingyas keep being turned back.

"Boatloads of Rohingyas from Myanmar are arriving every week. Through many points on our border they are attempting to sneak in," Lt. Col. Zahid Hassan, a border guard commander in Cox's Bazar said. "We are not allowing any of them to enter Bangladesh."

Bangladesh's foreign minister, Dipu Moni, said that her already poor and densely populated country is facing many crises with the Rohingya refugees. "In no situation we can take any extra load of Rohingya refugees which could worsen our problems here," said Moni.

After a widespread ethnic conflict in Myanmar in 1978, thousands of Rohingyas fled to Bangladesh from Myanmar.

Persecution by junta

After Myanmar stripped the Rohingyas of citizenship and identified them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, more Rohingyas began fleeing Myanmar.

In 1991, following alleged persecution by military junta in another wave tens of thousands of Rohingyas crossed over to Bangladesh. Bangladesh stopped granting Rohingyas refugee status in 1992.

But the trickle from across the border continued, resulting in the number of Rohingya refugees reaching 300,000 in Bangladesh. While 28,000 of them live in two UNHCR-sponsored camps, others live as illegal refugees in numerous decrepit camps scattered across south eastern Bangladesh.

In the illegal Rohingya colonies where electricity and sanitation facilities are absent, the refugees live in extreme poverty. In over-populated and poverty-stricken Bangladesh, local people do not welcome the Rohingyas.

The refugees are draining the local resources and it is resulting in increased poverty among local people, many allege.

"The Rohingyas are ready to work at a very low wage. So the local people are angry as their jobs are being taken away by the refugees," said Jasimuddin, a police officer in Cox's Bazar district, where most Rohingya refugees live.

"It leads to conflicts between local people and the mostly illegal refugees. Many local people are dead against the arrival of new refugees."

In 2009 Bangladesh began a crackdown on illegal Rohingyas living in the country. Many were arrested and sent to jail on charges of illegal infiltration. Many illegal Rohingyas have been forced to return to Myanmar in a formal "push-back" process by Bangladesh.

In 2010 a UN Joint Initiative [UNJI] sought to launch a 33-million-US-dollar project to alleviate poverty in Cox's Bazar which could benefit the refugees as well as the local population, the initiative said.

'Underhand intentions'

But Bangladesh government blocked the UNJI project- which was to be funded mostly by the EU and Australia, accusing the UN of "mala-fide intentions" and claiming that it was an "underhand attempt" to rehabilitate the refugees in the country.

Bangladesh says, any new initiative to help the Rohingyas in Bangladesh would attract fresh influx of refugees and so it cannot allow UNHCR to expand its support to the Rohingyas.

Chris Lewa, the director of Rohingya advocacy group Arakan Project said that extreme miseries force the Rohingyas to flee Myanmar and that they should not be denied refuge by Bangladesh.

"Bangladesh should not turn away people fleeing persecution: non-refoulement is a principle of international customary law, whether a country has signed the refugee convention or not," said Ms Lewa.

Bangladesh says that it firmly stands by its decision not to open its border to the Rohingyas now.

"The international community is pressuring us to accept the refugee as per the international customary law. It's unfair," said Foreign Minister Moni.

"Right from the time Rohingyas began taking refuge in Bangladesh, we have been a persistent objector to their entry here. When one country persistently objects to such an issue, the international customary law cannot be applicable to it."

'Impossible situation, serious trouble'

Last week in an official statement Myanmar president Thein Sein said, it's "impossible" for Myanmar to accept the Rohingyas because they are illegal immigrants and do not belong to the ethnicity of Myanmar.

"If Bangladesh does not open its border, the poor people will face very serious trouble," said Nurul Islam, a Rohingya community leader in Bangladesh.

Some rights activists and Rohingya issue experts said that - although the primary responsibility to resolve the Rohingya issue lies with the Myanmar government - by denying shelter to the refugees, Bangladesh is acting against international humanitarian law.

Kelley Currie, a fellow with the Washington-based think tank Project 2049 Institute and a former Asia policy adviser in the US State Department said that Bangladesh is obliged to provide refuge to the Rohingyas.

The first issue is the basic international legal obligation not to return individuals who are fleeing persecution for ethnic, religious or political reasons, said Currie.

"In this case the Rohingyas clearly qualify as refugees if they are able to cross an international border."

Bangladesh claims that it is not a party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, and is therefore not obliged to accept the Rohingyas. #

Writer: Shaikh Azizur Rahman and edited by Richard Connor

First published in DeutscheWelles (DW) online